On the odd occasion Vala ever professed to paying attention to more than a few words of a Daniel Jackson mission briefing, she would at least admit to having learned something from the reams and reams of discourse that whirled about her head. She could, if she really tried, pluck something out of the maelstrom and store it in her mental folder of useless information, in the unrealistic hope that Daniel might actually think she had more smarts than she generally let show. Today was one of those moments. With the exception of the weather, the planet was beautiful and the hospitality of the Mekrit-a community of fishermen and women who fit her genetic gene pool theory with astounding accuracy, because they were all blond-haired and blue-eyed-was unparalleled in the amount of banquet courses they insisted SG-1 sit through.

To her right, Cameron sat relaxed in his chair with his stomach forced out, his BDU belt undone and his eyes at half-mast. His earlier belch, which she half expected to cause him embarrassment and SG-1 some kind of diplomatic incident, was met with a loud chorus of applause and tabletop slapping from the large Mekrit gathering. They wanted more and, after several tankards of the local honeyed-wine, fortified with an exotic and apparently rare flower Vala couldn't remember the name of, Cameron was only too happy to oblige.

"I thought you said we shouldn't drink the wine?" Vala whispered to Daniel, who was sitting on her left, picking through the scraps of his fruit and vegetable salad, looking either bored or distracted. Sometimes it was hard to tell.

"I did," he murmured in return, piercing something round and purple with his folk and popping it in his mouth. "Actually, no. I said we shouldn't drink the wine. As in you, me and Sam. And Teal'c."

"Not Cameron?"

"No. Well, yes, considering how drunk he is, drinking the wine probably wasn't the brightest of ideas. However-"

"There's a 'but'?"

"Always expect the unexpected. In this case, Mitchell doesn't have much of a choice in the matter. Mekrit politics demands the legally appointed representative of any prospective trading partner pay their due respects by partaking in equal quantities of Dahalas wine with the first leader."

"Mister Taphir."

"Mister?" Daniel asked questioningly, and then nodded quickly. "I guess mister works."

"So, this is like one of your Earth drinking games?"

"Well, no, more like-"

Vala took a deep, theatrical breath, spread her arms wide and belted out in a decidedly out of tune key, "Ninety nine bottles of beer on the wall. Ninety nine-"

"Vala!"

"I never could get past eighty seven," she said with an air of dejection. "Never. Not even once!"

"I'm more surprised you even know the words!"

"Muscles," she sighed, as she sunk back in her chair and crossed her arms. "Though there's not much fun to be had when your drinking partner isn't exactly drinking."

"Teal'c taught you?"

"After a lesson in counting backwards from ninety nine, and a bottle of your Nappa finest."

"Should have known."

"Oh, I don't think so." Vala reached for her fork and used it to push her mostly untouched plate away. "Sam tells me you have a rather discerning palette when it comes to wine. Less light and white and bubbles, and more vivaciously red and expensive."

"Yes. I miss those days where we actually got enough downtime to indulge in more than cork sniffing and browsing for bargains on wine chateau dot com."

"They have bargains?"

"No," Daniel grumbled and pushed his plate to one side, in favor of his mug of the local coffee equivalent.

Vala tipped her head to one side and appeared to study him for a moment, before whispering in a clipped tone, "You might want to practice your sarcasm. I almost believed you."

A loud belch and some more table thumping was followed quickly by a heavily slurred "Yo! Jackson!" and the sound of a chair scraping noisily on the wooden floor.

"Well," Vala announced with a wide smile that quickly faded when she turned to face Cameron, who was now slumped forward and barely sitting on his chair. "Looks like someone has exceeded his limit for the evening."

Daniel rose to his feet and walked behind Vala's chair to get to Mitchell. "Want to give me a hand getting him to bed?"

"Can we do that? What happened to the bottles on the wall? The whole... whole..." She waved a hand frantically in the air. "Oh, you know... equal amounts of wine!"

"I don't know, but I think Mitchell is done for the night, don't you?"

Vala took in Cameron's slumbering form, the puddle of drool spreading over the table under his open mouth, and the nasally snoring that was almost loud enough to drown out the dying enthusiasm of the table slappers. "And here's me without my camera!"

~oOo~

Somewhere, someone was tearing down trees with a chainsaw. Somewhere close. Very close. Probably in the room. Cam turned onto his side and jammed the pillow over his head, not even daring to open his eyes, and desperately trying to tune out the chainsaw and its tree torture.

"Shuddup!" he said just a little too loudly, when it felt like the chainsaw was right next to his ear and about to fine-tune its blade on his scalp.

"You know," came a disembodied voice, "diplomacy is a lot like boxing. You have to learn to fight in your weight. And drinking in excess is a lot like eating in excess. They both rely upon the seldom practiced art of moderation, which is apparently not one of your finer skills."

"Va-la," Cam enunciated slowly, more because his mouth simply didn't want to work at normal speed, and also because somewhere between the two syllables he needed to pause to stop himself from puking up last night's... "Oh, God!"

"Well, no. At least, not anymore. Not sure what I miss most - my followers obeying my every order or my exclusive and quite expensive wardrobe collection."

"Can you just..."

"Be quiet? Shut up?"

"Yes," he hissed.

"I can, but Daniel says Taphir is expecting you for breakfast in about, oh... now."

And then it all came flooding back in the kind of Technicolor dream that Cameron remembered from his high school days, where drinking moonshine in the stable room at the back of his father's barn with some of his closest friends was seen as a rite of passage before turning twenty one, when it all became terribly legal and a whole lot less enjoyable. They practiced a lot.

Too much.

He lost some of his favorite brain cells in that little room.

"Now, meaning-"

"Close the curtains."

"What?" Vala's voice was closer now, her breath just bouncing off his exposed left cheek. "The curtains? Oh, no need to worry about your virtue. Your adoring fans are all waiting for you at breakfast, where I'm sure you will be serenaded with more cheers and table slapping. Did you know the whole table slapping ritual is only reserved for higher caste members of Mekrit society and visiting dignitaries?"

"No."

"Amazing what you can learn at one of Daniel's oh-so-boring missing briefings if you actually pay attention for a minute or so."

Cam could feel the blankets being pulled back. His legs were suddenly cold, and there was a draft running up the back of his spine. "Vala."

"Something else I learned at the briefing was that the Mekrit are sticklers for adhering to schedules, which means being late for ones celebratory breakfast could be seen as an ancestor to a diplomatic incident. And I don't know about you, but explaining the loss of this trade agreement to General Landry because you were late for waffles and eggs with Taphir wouldn't exactly look good on your personnel record."

"Precursor."

"Pre what?"

"Cursor. You said ancestor to a diplomatic incident, when the word you want is precursor. And what I want is my pants!"

"Oh. Oh! Your pants. I think they're here somewhere."

He heard Vala move away from the side of the bed and then come back a few seconds later, tossing at him what he assumed was his pants.

"You know," she went on to say, heedless of the fact he was semi-naked and freezing cold, "you have a terrible habit of losing clothing at the most inopportune moments. Not that I'm complaining."

"Turn around." Cam pointed towards the back wall of the room and twirled a finger in the air. "All the way around."

Vala sighed and turned away. "You've got nothing I haven't seen before."

"And I'm not about to start showing you."

"Well, while you're covering your bits, you might want to consider layering."

"What?"

"Layering! You haven't heard... no, I guess not. Let me introduce you to the seldom discussed but very fashionable tip of layering, where you start with one piece of clothing and then add another over the top. And so on, and so on, and-"

"You call that a fashion tip?"

"Well, you had no idea. It's freezing outside!"

"I could just put my jacket on ."

"Hence layering!"

Cam stood, pulled up his BDU pants and then looked out the window. "Whoa! What's with the weather?"

"Ahem! Lay-er-ing!" she said crisply, still with her back to him. "I'm not surprised the Goa'uld don't know about this place, what with the wacky weather and men in little skirts."

"Can we just get this over with?"

"Are you all respectable now?" Vala turned to face him and smiled appreciatively. "Splash of water, a couple of Tylenol, and you wouldn't care about the pictures Daniel and I took of you last night while you were enjoying some quality time with the... facilities."

"Oh, you didn't!"

"I bet you didn't know that once ingested, the juice of the Dahalas flower turns from clear to a lovely shade of violent yellow?"

"Violent?"

"Uh huh! A description more in keeping with the speed and severity at which you managed to puke up every last drop."

Cam sunk back down on the bed and dropped his head to his hands. Outside, an enormous clap of thunder announced the arrival of a massive electrical storm.

TBC